#morgenthau plan

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What were the Allied Plans for German Industry after World War II?

Introduction The industrial plans for Germany were designs the Allies of World War II considered imposing on Germany in the Aftermath of World War II to reduce and manage Germany’s industrial capacity. Neville Chamberlain showing the Anglo-German Declaration (the resolution) to commit to peaceful methods signed by both Hitler and himself, on his return from Munich on 30 September…

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Morgenthau Plan to divide Germany after World War 2.

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What was the Morgenthau Plan?

What was the Morgenthau Plan?

Introduction The Morgenthau Plan was a proposal to eliminate Germany’s ability to wage war following World War II by eliminating its arms industry and removing or destroying other key industries basic to military strength. This included the removal or destruction of all industrial plants and equipment in the Ruhr. It was first proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau…

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Morgenthau Plan - Wikipedia

However, according to Dobbins, in May 1945 – shortly after its approval in April 1945 – the newly appointed deputy military governor, General Clay, implied that the directive was unworkable and initially wanted it to be revised; after the deliberate loopholes were pointed out to him, General Clay did not press further for a revision but "took great liberties in interpreting and implementing JCS 1067". Clay's good-willed effort did meet obstacles, like General Marshall forbidding him from relaxing the strict non-fraternization to a more reasonable level. Dobbins remarks that the harsh punitive measures shifted toward reform over time as the US faced with the problem of feeding millions of Germans and the Soviet expansion

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Another Counterfactual Civilization with Science as its Central Project

Is a scientific civilization possible in an idyllic rural economy?

In Scientific Civilization: The Central Project I attempted to isolate the idea of a civilization with science as its central project and the idea of a civilization in which science is a means to an end, economically significant but not the central project of the civilization in question.

As a counterfactual example of a civilization with science as its central project, but in which science remains economically marginal, I constructed this scenario:

India has an unusually philosophical civilization, with countless traditions and a demographically significant portion of the population engaged in philosophically-related activities. If we imagine, as a counterfactual, the Indian subcontinent developing independently without contact with other civilizations, transitioning from a primarily agrarian-ecclesiastical civilization, to a philosophical civilization to a scientific civilization, without the underlying economic infrastructure dramatically changing, the result could be a scientific civilization in the sense of a civilization with science as its central project, though without what we would think of, after the advent of industrialization, as a civilization the economic structure of which is “scientific.”

Another counterfactual of economically marginal science as a central project of a civilization as a consequence of my recent post Counterfactuals in Planetary History, in which I considered the possibilities for Germany had the victorious Allies enforced the Morgenthau Plan of division and de-industrialization. In Counterfactuals in Planetary History I wrote:

One can even imagine this rural and agrarian Germany in the post-Cold War period, surviving under changed political and economic conditions. One can easily predict that the area would have become a major tourist draw because of its very different way of life, and once the restrictions on industrialization either became irrelevant or were gradually lifted, one could imagine many in the population wanting to keep the region rural and agricultural, partly because they had become familiar with the life, partly because of the tourist income from it, and partly because large industrial works are no longer the paradigm of economic development in the world at present. Whereas industries built on the scale of Stalinist gigantism were once the fetish of economic planners, this is no longer true. Cottage industries and craft traditions would have developed in a unique way in a Morgenthau Plan Germany, which might well have had a bright future in the 21st century.

There are many different ways in which de-industrialization might be enforced, and different degrees of severity in the enforcement. Morgenthau went into some detail of his plan for the de-industrialization of Germany in his book, Germany is Our Problem. Morgenthau’s vision for preventing Germany from every again engaging in industrialized warfare was to remove heavy industries from the country, though he did not go so far as to recommend de-electrification. His plan seems to have been aimed at the “commanding heights” of the industrial economy,

In the case of an enforced de-industrialization, a civilization might continue to be scientific, might even have science as its central project, but, as a condition of its enforced agrarian economy, would not possess an industrialized economy driven by scientific discovery. If schools and universities continued to operate, and the economy produced enough surplus value to support scholars who would not make a significant economic contribution, there is no reason that scientific research could not continue, though big science would not be possible. Here, then, is another form of civilization, another counterfactual, with science as its central project, but in which science is economically marginal. One could think of this as a socially engineered high level equilibrium trap.

It would be possible to formulate a variation on the theme of the zoo hypothesis according to which an entire planet might not only be observed, but might be forced to remain at some arrested state of economic development. Indeed, I have read several science fiction novels where this was the premise. Clifford Simak especially employed this theme in more than one novel. This suggests further counterfactuals.

What aspects of a civilization could be selectively repressed, i.e., subject to enforced limitations, and have the civilization remain intact? Science? Philosophy? Art? Politics? In a more Machiavellian formulation, and in a variation on the zoo hypothesis in which the zookeepers retain their invisibility, a civilization could be internally sabotaged by a highly advanced civilization that could selectively remove certain innovations to keep a civilization at a certain level of development (the antithesis of the familiar theme of alien technology transfers).

An advanced civilization might do this simply as a scientific experiment, to see what happens if a civilization is kept below a certain threshold of development indefinitely. This could be the source of a million-year-old civilization that never expands beyond its homeworld -- something I have speculated on in other posts (cf. e.g., The Globular Cluster Opportunity) -- that is to say, a million-year-old civilization that is not a supercivilization. This might be a question that a genuine supercivilization would want to study. 

In a million-year-old civilization selectively limited to keep its development below a certain threshold, the landscape would be littered with ruins from hundreds if not thousands of past civilizations. (Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl, 1645-49, Oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg)

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Addendum on Counterfactuals in Planetary History

We have little difficulty conceptualizing the early history of Earth as planetary history, and in seeing this planetary history in cosmological context. (image from http://spaceart1.ning.com/photo/early-earth-1)

In Counterfactuals in Planetary History I considered some of the possible outcomes for planetary history had the Morgenthau Plan been adopted and the post-war world order had involved the de-industrialization of Germany. I also noted how the Second World War consolidated planetary history, i.e., it has become commonplace to think of human history in terms of the entire planet, rather than some limited geographical region (often defined in terms of human ethnicity) since the end of the Second World War. Planetary wars serve to integrate planetary civilizations, analogous to the way in which the US was more tightly integrated after the Civil War than it was before the Civil War.

Ruminating on planetary history after writing about it in this post, I realized that we just as effortlessly conceive of planetary history when studying the earlier history of Earth, specifically, Earth before we came along. Before the categories of human history emerged (before the categories of human history are relevant), we employ the categories of science -- of geology, biology, ecology, climatology, etc. -- and these categories naturally apply to the entire planet.

So we have a familiar planetary history of Earth before human civilization, and we have a planetary history of Earth that begins with the Columbian Exchange and which was consolidated in the twentieth century with the planetary civilization we have today. It is, then, only the brief interregnum of the first few thousand years of civilization that are Balkanized by categories of thought that are anthropocentric, ethnocentric, and regional to the point of xenophobia. One might well call this the xenophobic era of historiography.

It ought to be among the aspirations of planetary historiography to make the transition from planetary natural history to planetary civilizational history a smooth and seamless one, so that we can conceive the period of the origins and growth of civilizations in terms of planetary history as well.

Planetary civilization from the perspective of the ISS.

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Anselm Kiefer

Morgenthau Plan (detail), 2013.

© Anselm Kiefer